Ran Theft of Moon for Free RPG Day

[killianred]

As soon as I get some free time, I plan to finish it: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6247

(Been slow going, only because of me letting the fire go out a couple of times... now that I'm reminded that folks are actively anticipating it, I will redouble my efforts to get it presentable and finished up.)

Excellent! Thank'e

[SirGalrim]

Ran a successful game at Arcon. It was a big hassle getting other Loremasters. One said yes, but did not like how the module was so linear and restrictive so he dropped out again. In the end I got one extra LM that had tried the game before. And as some players did not show up it turned out to be fine with two groups. Initial feedback is that the festival took to much time and the conflict/adventure too little time. If I ran it again I would have reduced the number of trials to 5. Second thing was that it was only one real encounter with Rathwulf. Talking to the Marshal and Ethal didn't really call for encounter rules. They had nothing to hide. Felt ridiculous to drag out information after one or two successes. I added some complications with Beornings suspecting the river-folk to add suspense and obstacles in this part. Journey was also quick with no hazards there and heroes quickly catching up to the thieves. That was an fun part with combination of scouting/stealth, encounter and combat. But it was quite easy for them to defeat the thieves in combat even with only average rolling of the dice. The heroes of course then cared more about returning the sickle than investigating more so they never went to the Falrock.

[SirGalrim]

I might sound a bit negative in the previous post. The adventure had it's strengths too. It very easy to introduce TOR mechanisms gradually with this adventure. Though I went rules light on the players part. Did not explain every step of encounters, journey or battle. More let it flow naturally. I think the player characters for the module was interesting. Some had nice motivation and background. I added information for those characters with a bit lacking background. I made sure to introduce some essential Loremaster characters in the first part. Rathwulf and Ethal are mentioned briefly there, but I think it's essential they come into play early. Along with the Marshal of course. I also had a man of the River-folk play some part as a nice set up of them being accused later.

[zedturtle]

Ran a successful game at Arcon. It was a big hassle getting other Loremasters. One said yes, but did not like how the module was so linear and restrictive so he dropped out again. In the end I got one extra LM that had tried the game before. And as some players did not show up it turned out to be fine with two groups. Initial feedback is that the festival took to much time and the conflict/adventure too little time. If I ran it again I would have reduced the number of trials to 5. Second thing was that it was only one real encounter with Rathwulf. Talking to the Marshal and Ethal didn't really call for encounter rules. They had nothing to hide. Felt ridiculous to drag out information after one or two successes. I added some complications with Beornings suspecting the river-folk to add suspense and obstacles in this part. Journey was also quick with no hazards there and heroes quickly catching up to the thieves. That was an fun part with combination of scouting/stealth, encounter and combat. But it was quite easy for them to defeat the thieves in combat even with only average rolling of the dice. The heroes of course then cared more about returning the sickle than investigating more so they never went to the Falrock.

Awesome! Thank you for the great feedback, especially the negative stuff.

You're right that the adventure is very linear. That's an unfortunate side-effect of it being a tutorial, Heart of Winter is/will be a lot more open.

I've been toying with the idea of explicitly calling out that once a hero has won a Trial, they cannot participate in any further Trials. I think that would make smaller groups focus more on the Trials that interest them (that they've got the skills for) and prevent larger groups from spamming all of the Trials (where everyone competes in every Trial).

As for the Marshal and Ethal, part of it is all about practice and part about adapting the rules as appropriate, e.g. using Healing on Torbald or the goblin. And the heroes should be suspicious... Rathwulf should be blaming Ethal, since she just emerged from Torbald's tent as the guilty party and Ethal should be a bit abrasive, and Torbald should be a bit confused and non-helpful. Maybe I'll need to rewrite that section so that those things are more clear and things are a bit more uncertain for the heroes.

As for catching up to the thieves, how did the heroes handle the thralls? Their answer is, of course, the crux of the adventure and it's purposeful that there are not super easy answers. Did the thralls plead with heroes, telling them that by recovering the Sickle that they were condemning innocents to death?

[zedturtle]

I might sound a bit negative in the previous post. The adventure had it's strengths too. It very easy to introduce TOR mechanisms gradually with this adventure. Though I went rules light on the players part. Did not explain every step of encounters, journey or battle. More let it flow naturally. I think the player characters for the module was interesting. Some had nice motivation and background. I added information for those characters with a bit lacking background. I made sure to introduce some essential Loremaster characters in the first part. Rathwulf and Ethal are mentioned briefly there, but I think it's essential they come into play early. Along with the Marshal of course. I also had a man of the River-folk play some part as a nice set up of them being accused later.

Great stuff! Thanks again for all the helpful feedback.

[SirGalrim]

I've been toying with the idea of explicitly calling out that once a hero has won a Trial, they cannot participate in any further Trials.

Yes we used that rule as adviced earlier in the thread. The contests still felt a bit dragged out.

As for the Marshal and Ethal, part of it is all about practice and part about adapting the rules as appropriate, e.g. using Healing on Torbald or the goblin. And the heroes should be suspicious... Rathwulf should be blaming Ethal, since she just emerged from Torbald's tent as the guilty party and Ethal should be a bit abrasive, and Torbald should be a bit confused and non-helpful. Maybe I'll need to rewrite that section so that those things are more clear and things are a bit more uncertain for the heroes.

Sounds good. It was a bit unclear. The heroes just went back and forth between the different people. It was hard to keep it as separate encounters. They where far to eager to stand and have "long" conversations with each.

As for catching up to the thieves, how did the heroes handle the thralls? Their answer is, of course, the crux of the adventure and it's purposeful that there are not super easy answers. Did the thralls plead with heroes, telling them that by recovering the Sickle that they were condemning innocents to death?

I had hinted that the three others where thralls by first describing them as looking poor and not well fed. Later I think one guardsman at the ford said that they looked like they had marks fro manacles and mentioned maybe they where thralls. When the heroes caught up to them Walfred sneaked close but failed his test to hear what they talked about. Later when they had gone to bed except the look out-man Walfred sneaked all the way into the camp. One other thralls was awake and whispered to the look-out. They talked about their freedom and that they had no other choice if they where to see their family alive. The heroes decided to march out and confront the thieves. They gave them a chance to surrender. Cenric tried to sweet talk himself out of the situation. Meanwhile Walfred stealthy got behind Centric with some extraordinary rolls. He tried to take the sickle but failed. Then Cenric called to arms. Norin actually slew a thrall and for that he had to roll a test and got shadow points. Most others focused on Cenric and killed him. The player of Walfred was afraid the other players would murder the thralls so he called out desperately to the last thralls and managed to get them to surrender now that Centric was dead. The thralls still pleaded to be allowed to return to Viglund with the sickle. But the heroes said no. But they offered to to come back to Beorn and live in Beorning lands. And said that they would help them get their family back. But they did not manage to convince the thralls (failed rolls) that this was an good idea. The thralls said that surly Viglund would kill their family then. They had to return and say they where ambushed... But the two beornings heroes swore to come to the aid of the thralls and that they would get revenge on Viglund!